Pola Wickham

Private View: Thursday 26th Sept 6-9pm

Each image is an individual piece linked to others by Wickham’s current visual preocupation and her painting experience to date. The resolution of each image is the result of reconciling different formal, painterly impulses with the needs of a specific subject into a single complete image.

“I have no wish to describe and copy what I see with paint. I want to find the logical way to organise what I see on a canvas. A two-dimensional surface with its own separate visual coherence, and make it stick with an organisation that tells the story of that particular image. It is the image itself that tells me how it should be made. For some years now my eye has been attracted to all the patterns I see around me: those I can see in nature, which have a less literal and obvious organisation, like the surface of water and fallen leaves; and those I can see in the man-made environment, such as tiles, rugs, fabrics, wallpaper, which take their provenance from nature. Gradually the paintings collect into a conversation, or a family discussion, as they are all related and yet slightly different.

Wickham’s work treads a fine line between what is beautiful and cultivated as painting, and what is clumsy and clunky as an image that is somewhat difficult for people to pigeon hole and categorise for commercial purposes. She has always felt this to be a very positive trait for the most part despite the obvious difficulties it brings with it.